Six artists to watch in their 30s and 40s
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Nathalie Djurberg, a Swede who lives in Berlin, makes sculptures of giant flowers with richly colored paint slapped on. She also makes stop-motion animations, full of vile happenings, that are mesmerizing.
Ulla von Brandenburg, a German based in Paris, has a black-and-white film that depicts a family living in the Villa Savoye, the famous modernist residence by Le Corbusier. It's haunting and delicate, and unlike most art videos, you want to watch it again.
Lara Favaretto, from Turin, has had the temerity to turn a section of the beautifully manicured Giardino delle Vergini into a swamp. It's a simple but impressive gesture that feels, in the setting of Venice, freighted with unexpected poetry.
Roman Ondák of Slovakia has similarly planted a garden inside the Czech and Slovak pavilion. You walk through it, barely registering it as art, before succumbing to its reticence and subtlety as if to a spell.
Grazia Toderi, from Padua, has a captivating two-screen video of a city at night seen from the air. Formally elegant, mysteriously alive, it imposed a hush on the crowds who saw it.
Pavel Pepperstein is one of Russia's most influential contemporary artists. His watercolors and drawings, which he calls "political hallucinations," combine fairy tale characters with political symbols, and they are never less than fascinating.
